Stephen Fry on Rhyme, Part 2
As I mentioned previously, I’m working through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled very slowly to absorb as much wisdom as I can about writing poetry. This week’s post covers Chapter 2, Section 2, on rhyme.
This is the shortest section that I’ve looked at so far, which mainly exists to introduce the ideas of the couplet (two rhymed lines) and triplet (three rhymed lines), and then to address cross-rhyming (the abab pattern) and envelope rhyme (the abba pattern).
The chapter also talks a bit about the “Why” of rhyming in poetry, and there was a nice sentence summary of it: “Rhyme may not be a defining condition of poetry, but poetry is pretty much a defining condition of rhyme.”
Next time, more rhymes!
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